Alan Stevenson was appointed to build a lighthouse on Skerryvore in 1837. The Duke of Argyll gave him permission to quarry rock anywhere on Tiree. But the Lewisian gneiss of the island was too hard and too difficult to carve to Stevenson’s demanding standards. In 1839, therefore, he opened a quarry at Camas Tuath on the Ross of Mull. In a few months this new quarry produced as much stone as the Hynish quarry had produced in three years. Twenty-six quarriers worked there, creating 4,300 blocks in one year. An accident in the quarry four years into the operation was widely reported at the time. It almost proved fatal:

An extraordinary instance of presence of mind lately occurred at the quarries in the Ross of Mull, Argyllshire, now wrought for the pier in connection with the Skerryvore Lighthouse, by the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses. On the 17th October, as Mr. Charles Barclay, the foreman of the quarries, was engaged in removing a splinter of stone from the face of a block of ten tons weight, which lay on an inclined ledge above him, the block slid forward and inclosed his left hand, which was bruised in such a manner that two of his middle fingers were destroyed, and the sharp points of rock came in contact the palm of his hand, so that it was held completely fast as in a vice. In this dreadful situation, Mr. Barclay’s great presence of mind and strength of nerve proved the means of saving his life and those of the men who were along with him. The first impulse of the men was to fetch a lever to raise the stone and liberate the prisoner; and had Mr. Barclay’s presence of mind deserted him, or had he fainted under the excruciating torture he endured, this rash purpose would have been executed, and the stone would have launched forward and crushed him and his comrades beneath its mass. He, however, was enabled to direct their proceedings with a wonderful degree of composure, and after some fruitless attempts to raise the block, Mr. Barclay resolved to cut out the stone round his hand as the only means of escape. This painful operation occupied about twenty minutes, during which time the tortures he endured did not prevent his working with the remaining hand in effecting his liberation from his extraordinary captivity. Mr. Barclay afterwards walked without assistance to the neighbouring village of Bunessan, two miles off, where Dr. McDiarmid, a gentleman who had lately returned from the Arctic expedition under Ross, removed the shattered bones. Next day, Dr. Campbell, who acts as surgeon to the Skerryvore works, arrived from Tyree, and conveyed his patient to the barracks at Hynish workyard, where he is fast recovering.
(Hereford Times, 25 November 1843, 4)

Captain James Clark Ross commanded a famous expedition to the Antarctic between 1839 and 1843. With two strong warships, HMS Erebus and Terror, the expedition confirmed the existence of the Antarctic continent, described the Ross seal for the first time and calculated the position of the South Magnetic Pole. ‘Dr McDiarmid’ is likely to have been Robert McCormick, a British Navy surgeon, explorer and naturalist. He also took part in the 1831 expedition on the Beagle with Charles Darwin.

Other articles in the series ‘Yesterday’s News’ can be found on the An Iodhlann website.

Dr John Holliday